Litseen

Andrew Lawler
2018-08-02 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Andrew Lawler

presents The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke, a sweeping account of America’s oldest unsolved mystery, the people racing to unearth its answer, and the sobering truths–about race, gender, and immigration–exposed by the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
“A fascinating account of one of our country’s great historical mysteries. Fast-paced and wonderfully written, with plenty of surprising turns along the way, The Secret Token is a delight.”–Nathaniel Philbrick
To reserve your seat in advance, purchae a copy of The Secret Token by speaking to a bookseller or ordering from our website.

Thursday, August 2, 2018 – 7:30pm

In 1587, 115 men, women, and children arrived at Roanoke Island on the coast of North Carolina. Chartered by Queen Elizabeth I, their colony was to establish England’s first foothold in the New World. But when the colony’s leader, John White, returned to Roanoke from a resupply mission, his settlers were nowhere to be found. They left behind only a single clue–a “secret token” carved into a tree. Neither White nor any other European laid eyes on the colonists again.
What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke? For four hundred years, that question has consumed historians and amateur sleuths, leading only to dead ends and hoaxes. But after a chance encounter with a British archaeologist, journalist Andrew Lawler discovered that solid answers to the mystery were within reach. He set out to unravel the enigma of the lost settlers, accompanying competing researchers, each hoping to be the first to solve its riddle. In the course of his journey, Lawler encounters a host of characters obsessed with the colonists and their fate, and he determines why the Lost Colony continues to haunt our national consciousness.
Thrilling and absorbing, The Secret Token offers a new understanding not just of the first English settlement in the New World but of how its disappearance continues to define–and divide–America.
Andrew Lawler is the author of the highly acclaimed Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?. He is a contributing writer for Science, a contributing editor for Archaeology Magazine, and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Slate.

Event address:

2904 College Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94705

Shannon Wheeler Book Signing!
2018-08-02 19:30 - 21:30 | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
Shannon Wheeler Book Signing!

Thursday, August 2, 7:30pm
Pegasus Books Downtown
New Yorker cartoonist and multiple Eisner Award-winner Shannon Wheeler signs his brand new book Memoirs of a Very Stable Genius (Image Comics) and hosts a short slide show on the history of cartooned political satire.

ABOUT
New Yorker cartoonist and multiple Eisner Award-winner Shannon Wheeler (Too Much Coffee Man, Sh*t My President Says, God is Disappointed in You) debuts MEMOIRS OF A VERY STABLE GENIUS this July from Image/Shadowline Comics.
MEMOIRS OF A VERY STABLE GENIUS is an irreverent book of personal short stories and gags featuring Shannon Wheeler’s critically acclaimed humor, pathos, and honesty—including a 40-page full-color section!
“Books are like children. It’s with pride I send this one out into the world to fend for itself, have its heart broken, take a job that will slowly erode all self-respect,” said Wheeler. “That said, this is the best book I’ve ever done.”
– See more at: https://imagecomics.com/content/view/memoirs-of-a-very-stable-geniusan-irreverent-and-entertaining-new-book-from#sthash.4tf3WwsM.dpuf

Poetry Flash presents Martin Espada, Lauren Marie Schmidt, and Gary Soto @ 7:30pm
2018-08-02 19:30 - 21:30 | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Martin Espada’s new book of poems is Vivas to Those Who Have Failed. Sandra Cisneros calls him “the Pablo Neruda of North American authors.” Recent collections include The Trouble Ball, The Republic of Poetry, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Alabanza, whose title poem has been widely anthologized and performed. In all, he’s published fifteen books as poet, editor, essayist, and translator. A former tenants lawyer for the Latino community of the greater Boston area, he’s received a Shelley Memorial Award, a Guggenhein Fellowship, and he’s just won the prestigious 2018 Ruth Lilly Prize for lifetime accomplishment.
Lauren Maris Schmidt’s new book of poems is Filthy Labors. Previous collections include Two Black Eyes and a Patch of Hair Missing, Psalms of the Dining Room, and The Voodoo Doll Parade, winner of the Main Street Rag Author’s Choice Chapbook Series. Among her prizes are the So to Speak Poetry Prize, Neil Postman Prize for Metaphor, and The Janet B. McCabe Prize for Poetry.
Gary Soto’s a poet, essayist, and novelist. His new book of poems is a revised, updated edition of The Elements of San Joaquin, his first collection, originally published in 1977, about which La Bloga had said, “The poet has an impeccable memory for capturing the music and sounds of his childhood. He carries a heavy sense of nostalgia with…grace…” He has since published twelve poetry collections, including New and Selected Poems, which was a National Book Award finalist as well as three novels and a memoir among other books. He has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Siobhan Adcock
2018-08-02 19:30 - 21:30 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Siobhan Adcock discusses her new novel, The Completionist.

Praise for The Completionist

“Thoughtful, suspenseful, and shot through with dark humor, The Completionist creates a future world near enough to our own that the familiarity stings and sings. Violence, climate change, invasive technologies, and the erosion of women’s freedoms–none of this is science fiction, but the novel harnesses these destructive forces toward an original and imaginative end. And the people who inhabit these pages are vivid, defiant reminders of the sustaining powers of purpose, honor, and family love.”—Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet and June

“Intense, chilling, visionary and compulsively readable, Adcock’s dystopian literary thriller takes on environmental collapse and reproductive rights with passion and vivid world-building. Comparisons to The Handmaid’s Tale are inevitable, though Adcock has her own things to say about the horrific costs of a society bent on controlling women’s freedoms.” —Sari Wilson, Girl Through Glass

“How rare it is to find such a seamless, brilliant combination of action and ideas, unique world and complex characterization. The Completionist unfolds a compelling mystery within a disquieting but strangely familiar world, with a tense, taut atmosphere keeps you turning the pages, and a family you can’t help but root for as they try, and often fail, to save each other.”—Julia Fierro, bestselling author of Cutting Teeth and The Gypsy Moth Summer

About The Completionist

In a near future in which plummeting birth rates have ominous political and personal implications for women, a young man’s search for his missing sister leads him into a disturbing and desperate underworld, where bitter freedoms are bought at a terrible price.

A young Marine, Carter Quinn, comes home from war to his fractured family, in a near-future America in which water is artificially engineered and technology is startlingly embedded in people’s everyday lives. At the same time, a fertility crisis has terrifying implications for women, including Carter’s two beloved sisters, Fred and Gardner. Fred, accomplished but impetuous, the eldest sibling, is naturally pregnant—a rare and miraculous event that puts her independence in jeopardy. And Gardner, the idealistic younger sister who lived for her job as a Nurse Completionist, has mysteriously vanished, after months of disturbing behavior. Carter’s efforts to find Gard (and stay on Fred’s good side) keep leading him back home to their father, a veteran of a decades-long war just like Carter himself, who may be concealing a painful truth that could save or condemn them all.

Poetry Flash: MARTÍN ESPADA, LAUREN MARIE SCHMIDT & GARY SOTO
2018-08-02 19:30 - 21:30 | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Martín Espada‘s new book of poems is Vivas to Those Who Have Failed. Sandra Cisneros calls him “the Pablo Neruda of North American authors.” Recent collections include The Trouble Ball, The Republic of Poetry, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Alabanza, whose title poem has been widely anthologized and performed. In all, he’s published fifteen books as poet, editor, essayist, and translator. A former tenants lawyer for the Latino community of the greater Boston area, he’s received a Shelley Memorial Award, a Guggenhein Fellowship, and he’s just won the prestigious 2018 Ruth Lilly Prize for lifetime accomplishment.

Lauren Marie Schmidt‘s new book of poems is Filthy Labors. Previous collections include Two Black Eyes and a Patch of Hair Missing, Psalms of the Dining Room, and The Voodoo Doll Parade, winner of the Main Street Rag Author’s Choice Chapbook Series. Among her prizes are the So to Speak Poetry Prize, Neil Postman Prize for Metaphor, and The Janet B. McCabe Prize for Poetry.

Gary Soto‘s a poet, essayist, and novelist. His new book of poems is a revised, updated edition of The Elements of San Joaquin, his first collection, originally published in 1977, about which La Bloga had said, “The poet has an impeccable memory for capturing the music and sounds of his childhood. He carries a heavy sense of nostalgia with…grace…” He has since published twelve poetry collections, including New and Selected Poems, which was a National Book Award finalist as well as three novels and a memoir among other books. He has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.

learn more

Contact: books@telegraphbooks.com

7:30pm

Moe’s Books
2476 Telegraph Ave
94704 Berkeley, California

After Hours: Joel Richard Paul - Defending the Constitution
2018-08-03 19:00 - 21:00 | Main Reading Room, Mill Valley Public Library, 375 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley , CA, 94941, United States
Friday, August 3rd · 7:00pm
From 1801-1835, Chief Justice John Marshall defined our Constitution and established the Supreme Court’s authority to hold the President and Congress accountable.
Joel Richard Paul, author of Without Precedent, argues that we are facing a constitutional crisis, making it worth reflecting on Marshall’s pragmatic genius for forging compromise in defense of the rule of law.
Registration recommended. Registration opens July 16th.
Add to my:iCal/Outlook
When:Friday, August 3, 2018
Time:7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Where:Mill Valley Public Library – Main Reading Room, 375 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley, California, 94941
Event Type:Library, After Hours
Contact:(415) 389-4292

Thor Hanson
2018-08-03 19:30 - 21:30 | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Thor Hanson

Presents Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees, a natural and cultural history of the buzzing wee beasties that make the world go round.
“A wondrous, action-packed journey to discover the secret lives of bees, flowers, and the unconventional men and women who study them. This book really is the buzz about bees, and it’s destined to become a natural history classic.”–Stephen Buchmann, author of The Reason for Flowers

To reserve your seat, purchase a copy of Buzz by speaking to a bookseller or ordering from our website.

Friday, August 3, 2018 – 7:30pm

Bees are like oxygen: ubiquitous, essential, and, for the most part, unseen. While we might overlook them, they lie at the heart of relationships that bind the human and natural worlds. In Buzz, the beloved Thor Hanson takes us on a journey that begins 125 million years ago, when a wasp first dared to feed pollen to its young. From honeybees and bumbles to lesser-known diggers, miners, leafcutters, and masons, bees have long been central to our harvests, our mythologies, and our very existence. They’ve given us sweetness and light, the beauty of flowers, and as much as a third of the foodstuffs we eat. And, alarmingly, they are at risk of disappearing.
As informative and enchanting as the waggle dance of a honeybee, Buzz shows us why all bees are wonders to celebrate and protect. Read this book and you’ll never overlook them again.
Author and biologist Thor Hanson is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Switzer Environmental Fellow, and winner of the John Burroughs Medal. His books include The Impenetrable Forest, Feathers, The Triumph of Seeds as well as the illustrated children’s favorite, Bartholomew Quill. Honors for Thor’s writing include The Phi Beta Kappa Award and two Pacific Northwest Book Awards. Hanson lives with his wife and son on an island in the Pacific Northwest.

Event address:

2904 College Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94705

Elizabeth Rush
2018-08-03 19:30 - 21:30 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Elizabeth Rush discusses her new book, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore.

Praise for Rising

“Sea level rise is not some distant problem in a distant place. As Elizabeth Rush shows, it’s affecting real people right now. Rising is a compelling piece of reporting, by turns bleak and beautiful.”―Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction

“A smart, lyrical testament to change and uncertainty. Elizabeth Rush listens to both the vulnerability and resiliency of communities facing the shifting shorelines of extreme weather. These are the stories we need to hear in order to survive and live more consciously with a sharp-edged determination to face our future with empathy and resolve. Rising illustrates how climate change is a relentless truth and real people in real places know it by name, storm by flood by fire.”―Terry Tempest Williams, author of The Hour of Land

“A strange new kind of travel guide, Rising is a journey through the turbulent forefront of climate change―the coastal communities, rich and poor, human and nonhuman, that are already feeling the first effects of our rising seas. Elizabeth Rush sets out to put a face on a subject that is all too often depicted in abstract graphs and statistics, and gives us a group portrait of the men and women who are fighting, fleeing, and adapting to the terrible disappearance of the land they live on.”―Charles C. Mann, author of 1491

“In this moving and memorable book, the voice of the author mingles with the voices of people in coastal communities all over the country―Maine, Rhode Island, Louisiana, Florida, New York, California―to offer testimony: The water is rising. Some have already lost their homes; some will lose them soon; others are studying or watching or grieving. Though they haven’t met each other, their commonality forms a circle into which we are inexorably pulled by Elizabeth Rush’s powerful words.”―Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

About Rising

Harvey. Maria. Irma. Sandy. Katrina. We live in a time of unprecedented hurricanes and catastrophic weather events, a time when it is increasingly clear that climate change is neither imagined nor distant―and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways.
In this highly original work of lyrical reportage, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place. Weaving firsthand accounts from those facing this choice―a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago―with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of the communities both currently at risk and already displaced, Rising privileges the voices of those usually kept at the margins.
At once polyphonic and precise, Rising is a shimmering meditation on vulnerability and on vulnerable communities, both human and more than human, and on how to let go of the places we love.

Bay Area Poets Coalition
2018-08-04 15:00 - 17:00 | Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA, 94702, United States
STRAWBERRY CREEK LODGE
1320 Addison St., Berkeley, CA

Addison is one block south of and parallel to University Ave.
between Acton & Bonar St.
Parking on the street (NOT in the S.C.L. parking lot)

Check in at the front desk and you will be directed to the meeting location
(usually Movie Room, or backyard garden)

All Ages Welcome

Come and enjoy a friendly and informal read-around —
3-5 minutes per poet/reader, or “just listening” is fine too 🙂

Thor Hanson at the SF Botanical Garden
2018-08-04 15:00 - 17:00 | San Francisco Botanical Garden, 1199 9th Ave, San Francisco, CA - California, 94122
Thor Hanson discusses his new book, Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees, at the San Francisco Botanical Garden. This event will feature a talk in the Fragrance Garden followed by a signing. ***NOTE*** This is a free event but there is an $9.00 admission fee to the garden for Non-San Francisco residents. Seating will be limited.

Praise for Buzz

“Thor Hanson is a gifted story teller and naturalist. In Buzz, he takes us along on a wondrous, action-packed journey to discover the secret lives of bees, flowers, and the unconventional men and women who study them. This book really is the buzz about bees, and it’s destined to become a natural history classic.”―Stephen Buchmann, author of The Reason for Flowers

“Thor Hanson is a magician at making entomology and taxonomy exciting, highlighting the fascinating world of bees. Buzz hums with science and history, exposing how bees have shaped our world. A delightful, buzzworthy must-read!”―Daniel Chamovitz, author of What a Plant Knows

“As he did for feathers and seeds, Thor Hanson has written a wonderfully engaging work of natural history that will delight readers with its elegant prose, surprising stories, and deep humanity. Bees, so important to life on earth, are fortunate to have someone as passionate and knowledgeable as Hanson tell the tale of their evolutionary past, turbulent present, and precarious future. After reading Buzz, you will look at bees with a profound mixture of awe and gratitude.”―Eric Jay Dolin, author of Black Flags, Blue Waters, and Leviathan

About Buzz

From the award-winning author of The Triumph of Seeds and Feathers, a natural and cultural history of the buzzing wee beasties that make the world go round.
Bees are like oxygen: ubiquitous, essential, and, for the most part, unseen. While we might overlook them, they lie at the heart of relationships that bind the human and natural worlds. In Buzz, the beloved Thor Hanson takes us on a journey that begins 125 million years ago, when a wasp first dared to feed pollen to its young. From honeybees and bumbles to lesser-known diggers, miners, leafcutters, and masons, bees have long been central to our harvests, our mythologies, and our very existence. They’ve given us sweetness and light, the beauty of flowers, and as much as a third of the foodstuffs we eat. And, alarmingly, they are at risk of disappearing.
As informative and enchanting as the waggle dance of a honeybee, Buzz shows us why all bees are wonders to celebrate and protect. Read this book and you’ll never overlook them again.

STARTING FROM SAN FRANCISCO: THE BABY BEAT GENERATION AND THE SECOND SAN FRANCISCO RENAISSANCE
2018-08-04 18:00 - 21:00 | The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
SAT. AUG. 4TH, 6-9PMJoin Third Mind Books to celebrate the release of Starting from San Francisco: The Baby Beat Generation and the Second San Francisco Renaissance, a Beat literary reunion and reading with:

Thomas Rain Crowe
Neeli Cherkovski
Kaye McDonough
Jack Hirschman
Philip Daughtry
Sharon Doubiago
Clive Matson
B. Alexandra Szerlip
Anne Valley-Fox
Jim Dallesandro
and Joe Provenzano

…also featuring Third Mind Books founder Arthur S. Nusbaum’s pioneering presentation on the Baby Beat Generation and the Second San Francisco Renaissance, “Beat Mentors & Their Progeny” as delivered at the 2017 European Beat Studies Network Conference in Paris, France.

David Zeltser, The Universe Ate My Homework
2018-08-05 16:00 - 18:00 | Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave, Santa Cruz , CA, 95060, United States
Bookshop Santa Cruz is delighted to welcome back David Zeltser with his new book The Universe Ate My Homework. Abby hates doing homework. In fact, she’ll do just about anything to get out of it. So when she discovers an amazing scientific recipe for creating a parallel universe where she’ll never have to do homework again, she’s ready to jump right in. There’s just one small wrinkle—–she might not be able to find a way back. Inspired by mind-bending modern physics, David Zeltser and illustrator Ayesha L. Rubio spin the tale of a hilarious girl in a truly out-of-this-world adventure.
David Zeltser is the author of the hilarious novels Lug: Dawn of the Ice Age and Lug: Blast from the North, as well as acclaimed picture books Ninja Baby and Stinker. When he was a kid, David was always asking questions about the universe. He went on to study physics at Harvard and was fortunate to co-author a paper with the world-renowned physicist Howard Georgi. In Santa Cruz, David and his friend Julia Chiapella cofounded a free after-school writing center for kids called the Word Lab, as well as the Chamber of Heart and Mystery at the Museum of Art and History. David lives in Santa Cruz with his wife, daughter and a dog who will gladly eat your homework. Come visit his parallel universe at www.davidzeltser.com.
“Even readers who don’t share Abby’s aversion to homework will be sucked in.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Don’t try this at home, just bring it home. The Universe Ate My Homework is totally safe (and delightful) to read.” —Robert Krulwich, NPR science journalist and co-host of Radiolab
This free event will take place at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Open seating is usually set up about an hour before the event begins.

Spanish Book Discussion Group
2018-08-06 19:00 - 20:00 | Kepler’s Books, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park , CA, 94025, United States
Las Elegidas – Jorge Volpi
Trata de personas, violencia, prostitución y muerte; y, entreverado con todo esto, el amor. El Chino y Salvina salen de Tenancingo, para cruzar la frontera y caer en las garras de El Gringo. Una vez del otro lado, a los hombres los pone a trabajar en los plantíos de fresa y a las mujeres las prostituye. Salvina es una de sus favoritas.
Cada tanto se acuesta con ella y le da permiso de pasar las noches con El Chino, quien resulta bueno para los negocios, así que le va soltando las riendas, lo vuelve parte de su gente al igual que a Luciano, el primo del Chino, hasta que se ganan su confianza y lo asesinan. Pero El Chino y Luciano no son mejores que El Gringo, se quedan con sus negocios y con los mojados que siguen llegando del otro lado de la frontera. Abrirán un centro nocturno y traficarán mujeres, con la misma crueldad con la que a ellos los usaron. Esta es una novela escrita en forma poética llena de traiciones, venganza y honor en la que los personajes sortearán toda clase de vicisitudes que reflejan la realidad de nuestro tiempo.

The Diesel Readers Book Group discuss THE CONSPIRACY
2018-08-06 19:00 - 21:00 | East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 94618
East Bay Booksellers invites you to The Diesel Readers Book Group’s discussion of The Conspiracy, by Israel Centeno, on Monday August 6th at 7pm.
When leftist revolutionary Sergio’s sniper shot misses the President of Venezuela, he’s thrown into a sudden tailspin. As he attempts to escape the increasingly militarized regime, he winds up taking residence in a bohemian beachside commune, where he keeps a low profile until Lourdes, his former comrade, the object of his desire, and his possible betrayer, turns up one evening. Pursued by their former trainer in guerrilla warfare on the orders of the newly appointed Minister of the Interior, the two team up with unlikely partners to hatch a new plan for their survival. This poetic thriller, the second in Phoneme Media’s City of Asylum imprint, challenges the origin myth of South America’s radical left, resulting in its author’s exile from Venezuela.

** The Diesel Readers is an ongoing group, and is open to all. **

Event date:

Monday, August 6, 2018 – 7:00pm

Event address:

East Bay Booksellers
5433 College Avenue

Oakland, CA 94618

Chas Smith, Cocaine + Surfing
2018-08-07 19:00 - 21:00 | Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave, Santa Cruz , CA, 95060, United States
Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes surf journalist Chas Smith for a discussion and signing of his latest book, Cocaine + Surfing: A Sordid History of Surfing’s Greatest Love Affair. Cocaine + Surfing peels the curtains back on a hopped up, sometimes sexy sometimes deadly relationship and uses cocaine as the vehicle to expose and explain the utterly absurd surf industry to outsiders. It also explores where dreams go when they die.
It is likely not terribly surprising that surfers like to party. The 1960-70s image, bolstered by Tom Wolfe and Big Wednesday, was one of mild outlaws. Tanned boys who refused to grow up, spending their days drinking beer and smoking joints on the beach in between mindless hours in the water. As the surf brands accidentally morphed into a multimillion, then multibillion dollar industry beginning in the 1980s, however, the derelict portrait began to harm business. In order to achieve wild year-on-year growth that came to be expected surf trunks, t-shirts and sunglasses had to be sold en mass through Midwestern mall stores. Moms in Des Moines did not want corn-fed junior to be a delinquent. And so the external surf image of the 1980s, 90s into the present became Kelly Slater and Laird Hamilton. Health, vitality, bravery, clean-living, positive and pure with heavy doses of puritanism.
Internally, though, surfing had moved on from booze and weed to its heart’s true home, its soul’s twin flame. Cocaine’s rise in American popular culture as the choice of rich, white elites was matched, then quadrupled, within surf culture. The parties got wilder, the nights stretched longer, the stories became more ridiculously unbelievable. And there has been no stopping, no dip in passion.
The surfer and his lover are entwined in gorgeously dysfunctional embrace. A forbidden love like Romeo and his Juliet and few, if any, outside the insular surf world knew or know about this particular rhapsody. A byzantine ethic keeps interlopers far away. Bad behavior is also kept very well-hidden, even from insiders, but evidence of psychosis rears its head from time to time. Overdoses, bar fights, surf contests and murders and cover-ups.
Chas Smith the author of Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell (It Books, November 2013), which was optioned for television by Fox 21 (Homeland and Sons of Anarchy) with producers at Television 360 (Game of Thrones) and a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award for Nonfiction. Chas began his writing career as a foreign correspondent, penning pieces for Vice, Paper, and Blackbook, amongst others, from Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, Azerbaijan and Colombia which led to a brief career as a war correspondent for Current TV. After being kidnapped by Hezbollah during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war he transitioned to surf journalism where he was a featured writer at the brash Stab before becoming Editor at Large at Surfing Magazine. There he developed a reputation as the most controversial voices in the space.
Matt Warshaw, author of the Encyclopedia of Surfing, calls him, “Bright and hyper-ironic.” William Finnegan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Barbarian Days, says that Chas, “…calls it like he sees it and in surfing that’s not usually the case.”
This free event will take place at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Chairs for open seating are usually set up about an hour before the event begins.

THE SF POWDER KEG
2018-08-07 19:00 - 21:00 | Institute Of advanced Uncertainty [I.O.U.], 296 Ivy Street, btwn. Gough and Franklin, San Francisco, 94102
AN EVENING OF POETRY WITH

Cathy Arellano
Tanea Lunsford Lynx
Ash Tré Phillips
Tongo Eisen-Martin
TUESDAY, AUGUST 7th
@ 7PM
FREE ENTRY
@ INSTITUTE OF advanced UNCERTAINTY
@ 296 IVY STREET, SAN FRANCISCO

Undertone Mag Issue 002 Preview & Reading
2018-08-08 18:00 - 20:00 | E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore, 410 13th Street, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
Undertone Mag is celebrating the launch of its second issue, “On Body,” with a reading at E.M. Wolfman Books. Come by on August 8th for performances from local artists and a sneak peek at Issue 002!
“On Body” explores the thoughts and feelings women of color have about their bodies. Performers on the 8th include Maya Simone and Valentina de Roca Fuerte.
Come hang with us! ♥

Flash Fiction Forum Reading Series:
2018-08-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Works Gallery, 364 S. Market St., San Jose, CA, 95113, United States
Upcoming Readings

Sylvia Verange
2018-08-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books, 506 Clement St, San Francisco , CA, 94118, United States
Please join us at Green Apple Books on Clement street on Wednesday, August 8th at 7:00 p.m. as we welcome Sylvia Verange as she discusses her newest book (from Rare Bird Books), Two Breath, One Step: Hiking Across the Himalayas.

Praise for Two Breaths, One Step
” Two Breaths, One Step is a weave of extraordinary natural beauty, personal determination, intriguing cultural encounters, and magical spiritual moments–a significant personal odyssey coming together during a few months trekking the Himalayas. Sylvia writes with candor and the kind of descriptive detail that makes you feel you are walking right along with her.”
— Joseph Selbie, author of The Yugas
“Rich with cultural, geographical and personal details, Sylvia Verange’s Two Breaths, One Step is a sensual encounter with the beauty and danger of the Himalayas. Like the artist she is, Verange paints a vivid picture of the sounds, smells and the challenges of traveling in the highest mountains in the world.”
— Nancy Anderson, author of Work with Passion

Born in California, Sylvia Verange has long wandered remote corners of the world, using her journeys to further understand both herself and the world in which she lives. When not on an adventure in wild and beautiful places, Ms. Verange paints, writes, and teaches in northern California.

Brenda Hillman, Matthew Zapruder, and Robert Hass
2018-08-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Books Inc. Berkeley, 1491 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94710, United States
DATE & TIME:

Thursday, August 9, 2018 – 7 p.m.

LOCATION:
Books Inc. 1491 Shattuck Ave Berkeley, CA 94710
View a map and get directions.

DESCRIPTION:

Join Books Inc. in Berkeley for an evening celebrating poetry and prose with Pushcart Prize-winner Brenda Hillman reading from her enchanting new collection, Extra Hidden Life, Among the Days; Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winner Robert Hass discussing his illuminating new work, A Little Book on Form: An Exploration Into the Formal Imagination of Poetry; and American Academy of Arts and Sciences Prize-winner Matthew Zapruder sharing his impassioned and refreshing literary criticism, Why Poetry.

Stephen Kessler
2018-08-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books, 506 Clement St, San Francisco , CA, 94118, United States
Stephen Kessler joins us on Thursday, August 9th to read from his collection, Garage Elegies.

About Garage Elegies
In Garage Elegies, Stephen Kessler records with grief and wit, documentary realism and ranging imagination, poignancy and irony, a journey through the gains and losses of a lifetime. From the twenty-four numbered poems of the title (composed in the poet’s garage) to fanciful inventions like “My Gym at Midnight,” passionate meditations like “River Lovers” and nightmarish visions like “Bedless in Bedlam,” his emotional honesty, conversational lyricism and wry melancholy are at once dazzling and down to earth, heart-opening and consciousness-wrenching, retro-romantic and totally contemporary. Open this book to any page and find an unmistakably authentic voice.

Stephen Kessler’s poems, translations, essays, criticism, and journalism have appeared over the last fifty years in hundreds of literary magazines, newspapers, anthologies and books. His translations of Luis Cernuda have received the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men’s Poetry, the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the PEN Center USA Translation Award. His version of Save Twilight: Selected Poems by Julio Cortázar received a Northern California Book Award. He has edited numerous magazines and newspapers, most notably Alcatraz, an international journal; The Sun, a Santa Cruz newsweekly; and The Redwood Coast Review, four-time winner of the California Library Association’s PR Excellence Award. He is also the editor and principal translator of The Sonnets by Jorge Luis Borges, and the author of a novel, The Mental Traveler.

Katharine Dion, The Dependents
2018-08-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave, Santa Cruz , CA, 95060, United States
Bookshop Santa Cruz presents Katharine Dion, in conversation with Elizabeth McKenzie, for her new book, The Dependents—a wise and lyrical debut novel about a new widower confronting the truth about his long marriage. This event is part of our Debuts of Summer series. Receive a collectible button, designed by Bookshop, to commemorate this event.
After the sudden death of his wife, Maida, Gene is haunted by the fear that their marriage was not all it appeared to be. Alongside Ed and Gayle Donnelly, friends since college days, he tries to resurrect happy memories of the times the two couples shared, raising their children in a small New Hampshire town and vacationing together at a lake house every summer. Meanwhile, his daughter, Dary, challenges not only his happy version of the past but also his view of Maida. As a long-standing rift between them deepens, Gene starts to understand how unknown his daughter is to him–and how enigmatic his wife was as well. And a lingering suspicion seizes his mind that could upend everything he thought he knew.
Katharine Dion’s assured debut moves seamlessly between Gene’s present-day journey and the long history of a marriage and friendship. Rich and wonderfully alive, The Dependents is the most moving kind of drama, an intimate glance into the expanse of family life and the way we must all eventually bridge the chasm between what we want to believe and what we know to be true.
“The Dependents is a big book, one that grapples with important questions through generations…Dion’s intelligence and ambition truly shine through sentence after sentence.” —Kate Walbert, National Book Award finalist and author of A Short History of Women
Katharine Dion was born in Oakland, California. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was awarded the Iowa Arts Fellowship. She has also been a MacDowell Fellow and the recipient of a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. She lives in Berkeley, California. The Dependents is her first novel.
This free event will take place at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz, CA. Chairs for open seating are usually set up an hour before the event begins.

Zines on desire // reading & release party
2018-08-09 19:00 - 21:00 | E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore, 410 13th Street, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
to celebrate our printing and release of read this when hungry, we’re hosting a reading and sale !!
including other zines on desire:
symbiotic sexting
sun spots (printed by floss editions)

BINDERY: Keith Gessen / A Terrible Country
2018-08-09 19:30 - 21:00 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery hosts All the Sad Young Literary Men author Keith Gessen for his new novel A Terrible Country. With Keith in conversation will be The Millions’ Lydia Kiesling. Please join us!

When Andrei Kaplan’s older brother Dima insists that Andrei return to Moscow to care for their ailing grandmother, Andrei must take stock of his life in New York. His girlfriend has stopped returning his text messages. His dissertation adviser is dubious about his job prospects. It’s the summer of 2008, and his bank account is running dangerously low. Perhaps a few months in Moscow are just what he needs. So Andrei sublets his room in Brooklyn, packs up his hockey stuff, and moves into the apartment that Stalin himself had given his grandmother, a woman who has outlived her husband and most of her friends. She survived the dark days of communism and witnessed Russia’s violent capitalist transformation, during which she lost her beloved dacha. She welcomes Andrei into her home, even if she can’t always remember who he is.

Andrei learns to navigate Putin’s Moscow, still the city of his birth, but with more expensive coffee. He looks after his elderly–but surprisingly sharp!–grandmother, finds a place to play hockey, a café to send emails, and eventually some friends, including a beautiful young activist named Yulia. Over the course of the year, his grandmother’s health declines and his feelings of dislocation from both Russia and America deepen. Andrei knows he must reckon with his future and make choices that will determine his life and fate. When he becomes entangled with a group of leftists, Andrei’s politics and his allegiances are tested, and he is forced to come to terms with the Russian society he was born into and the American one he has enjoyed since he was a kid.

A wise, sensitive novel about Russia, exile, family, love, history and fate, A Terrible County asks what you owe the place you were born, and what it owes you. Writing with grace and humor, Keith Gessen gives us a brilliant and mature novel that is sure to mark him as one of the most talented novelists of his generation.

“A cause for celebration: big-hearted, witty, warm, compulsively readable, earnest, funny, full of that kind of joyful sadness I associate with Russia and its writers.” – George Saunders, Man Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo

“Keith Gessen is one of my favorite writers and A Terrible Country is even better than I hoped. By turns sad, funny, bewildering, revelatory, and then sad again, it recreates the historical-psychological experience of returning, for twenty-first-century reasons, to a country one’s parents left in the twentieth century. It’s at once an old-fashioned novel about the interplay between generational roles, family fates, and political ideology, and a kind of global detective mystery about neoliberalism (plus a secret map of Moscow in terms of pickup hockey). Gessen is a master journalist and essayist, as well as a storyteller with a scary grasp on the human heartstrings, and A Terrible Country unites the personal and political as only the best novels do.” – Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and The Possessed

“A Terrible Country is an engaging and entertaining novel, full of humor and humility, and always after one thing–the truth of contemporary life. Gessen gives us the people of Moscow–businessmen, anarchists, grandmothers, dissidents, baristas, hockey goalies, prostitutes, and FSB agents–not as fanciful characters but with the full force of the real. His affectionate, clear-eyed portrait of one terrible country has plenty to teach us about our own.” – Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding

Keith Gessen is the author of All the Sad Young Literary Men and a founding editor of n+1. He is the editor of three nonfiction books and the translator or co-translator, from Russian, of a collection of short stories, a book of poems, and a work of oral history, Nobel Prize-winner Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl. A contributor to The New Yorker and The London Review of Books, Gessen teaches journalism at Columbia and lives in New York with his wife and son.

Lydia Kiesling is the editor of The Millions and the author of The Golden State, a novel publishing September from FSG/MCD. Her essays and criticism have appeared at outlets including The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Slate, and The New Yorker online, and have been recognized in Best American Essays 2016. She lives in San Francisco with her family. Author photo by Andria Lo.

RSVP appreciated but not required. If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of A Terrible Country and/or any of Keith’s books, order below and put your request in the comments field.

This is an all ages event. The bar opens at 7, event begins at 7:30pm.

Please note: this event will be at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.

Jason Morris / Levon Helm
2018-08-09 19:30 - 21:30 | The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
Booksmith is proud to host the San Francisco launch for Jason Morris‘ first full-length collection of poetry, Levon Helm. Reading with Jason is the poet Nicholas James Whittington. Please join us!

Levon Helm is Jason Morris’ first full-length collection, a picaresque situated in the drum and voice of mind. Like the drummer-singer with whom it shares a name, its influences are broad but firmly American. Along with bits torn from the edges of Moby-Dick and The Maltese Falcon, it mines the margins of Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation. As it takes stock of the immediacy and scale of places in the American West like Pinnacles and the Puget Sound, its psychic roots dig a haunted, old New England. These lyric poems are takes on human memory in geological time, as interested in their own asides and parentheticals as they are in the elements.

An excerpt, courtesy Ugly Duckling Presse:

Thin newsprint, a little ripped
on which you wrote
LANGUAGE IS THE THRONE OF THE OTHER
I was able to get inside of the building
but I’d lost the piece of paper
on which I’d written all of the codes
outside the day’s grays and greens
a fluid human movement we slipped into
I grew confused & trusted in you
your honesty formed the spine
of my mysterious neutrality
There are no vipers in this poem
we continued walking until
we were way out in the cuts, collecting
wildflowers by the highway abutment
I’d gotten stuff for sandwiches
you were talking about feeling like
you should want something beyond
even poetry or love, can you
name what that something is
wanting to not want is more accurately
religious, how now we’re where we were

“With the publication of Levon Helm, San Francisco poet Jason Morris’ long-awaited full length debut, Ugly Duckling Presse has gifted clamoring fans and soon-to-be-fans a keen, generous artifact of the life of a poet in the 21st century. A voracious reader of his daily surroundings and of the life of the mind, Morris attends to landscapes both urban and wild with a relaxed yet exacting eye. These poems display a flowering generosity of attention very much in the present (“looking directly – / as poets often are – at what you name”). Each poem is a kind of gemlike honing amidst the “perpetual and beautifully obscene continuance” we call living, now. It is a pleasure to be with Jason Morris “in this looking”. As the book itself astutely warns, “You only get to read it / for the first time once: Slow down.” – Alli Warren

“Why didn’t I think of writing a book called Levon Helm? Go, Jason! And thanks.” – Clark Coolidge

“Levon Helm reminds me of late Holderlin sculpture – its compact images, spiritual fragments, and shimmed, crisp wording speak of an attainable fluidity between heartbeat and carved page, where its map legends and state lines describe a divine closeness and granularity of detail, all heart and repair. Humble, gracious, Morris knows that “wanting to not want is more accurately / religious, how now we’re where we were.” This book is jagged and smooth, its endurance, overdue. I’ve often endeavored to see myself through Morris’ poems, in its decades, page by page; his is a truth I’ve craved and always known – applied for selfish purposes as a double to compare my own lines, mind, and heart. Spread across pages, huddled in spots of crisp fuzz and harmony, lumps taken, his voice, I know: “a kid // of crickets & lightning” “as ridiculous as me / welding my desire to your hair.” – John Coletti

Jason Morris was born and raised in Vermont and now lives in San Francisco. His chapbooks are Spirits & Anchors (Auguste Press, 2010), From the Golden West Notebooks (Allone Co., 2011), Local News (Bird & Beckett Books, 2013), Takes (Bootstrap Press, 2015), and Late to Practice (Dirty Swan, 2017). For seven years, he was the editor of Big Bell magazine; with J Grabowski, he founded the small press PUSH.

Nicholas James Whittington is a poet, scholar, educator, editor, printer, and publisher born and raised in San Francisco. He now lives in Oakland, but continues to edit and publish the roughly annual AMERARCANA along with the occasional small book under the auspices of his family bookshop, Bird & Beckett, here in the city, and does letterpress printing and design work at Impart Ink, an errant studio. His first full-length collection of poetry, Creances, is due out this year from Bootstrap Press. Recent chapbooks include Provisions (2017, from PUSH Press) and Indefinite Sessions (2016, from Gas Meter Books).

RSVP appreciated but not required.

If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of Levon Helm, order below and put your request in the comments field.

Neighborhood Event: PASEO ARTISTICO
2018-08-11 12:00 - 19:00 | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
1-3pm Kid’s Craft Table
4pm Peggy Reskin: Dynamic Speaker and Author of Barefoot Frontrunners; Sex Women and Power
6:30pm Poetry – Per-versions with your host Arturo Mantecon
https://www.paseoartistico.org

Epic Poetry Reading, Frederick Glaysher, at Sacred Grounds
2018-08-11 14:00 - 17:00 | Sacred Grounds, 2095 Hayes, Sacred Grounds, 94117
In 1977, Frederick Glaysher took a theatre course in the Interpretative Reading of Poetry, learning that the Greek rhapsodes would travel throughout ancient Greece reciting Homer. Before long the idea of writing an epic poem became compelling and the dream that one day I might also revive the art of the rhapsode.
Thirty years in the making, The Parliament of Poets: An Epic Poem takes place partly on the moon, at the Apollo 11 landing site, the Sea of Tranquility, an epic tale or chant, the story of humanity from Blombos Cave to the dark side of the moon.
In a world of Quantum science, Apollo calls all the poets of the nations, ancient and modern, East and West, to assemble on the moon to consult on the meaning of modernity. The Parliament of Poets sends the main character, the Poet of the Moon, on a Journey to the seven continents to learn from all of the spiritual and wisdom traditions of humankind. On Earth and on the moon, the poets teach a new global, universal vision of life.
Glaysher has read more than twenty-five times from his epic poem, mostly in Metro Detroit, at Detroit Public Library, Troy Public Library, universities, cafes, UU churches, the Theosophical Society, and elsewhere. In California, last year he read at Tuesdays at North Beach Library, Cafe International (SF), Florey’s Books (Pacifica), and at the Himalayan (Berkeley).
Download the Brochure for Epic Poetry Readings at https://earthrisepress.net
“Like a story around a campfire.” —The Audience
“Certainly wowed the crowd at the library with the performance and the words themselves.” —Albany Poets News, New York
“Glaysher has written an epic poem of major importance that is guaranteed to bring joy and an overwhelming sense of beauty and understanding to readers who will travel the space ways with this exquisite poet. While the poem reads like the classic poetry of Milton, it has the contemporary edge of genius modernity. I am truly awed by this poet’s use of epic poetry that today’s readers will connect with, enjoy and savor every word, every line and every section. Frederick Glaysher is a master poet who knows his craft from the inside out, and this is truly a major accomplishment and contribution to American Letters. Once you enter, you will not stop until the end. A landmark achievement. Bravo!” —ML Liebler, Poet, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan​
“A remarkable poem by a uniquely inspired poet, taking us out of time into a new and unspoken consciousness…” —Kevin McGrath, Harvard University, author on the Mahabharata​
​”A great epic poem of startling originality and universal significance, in every way partaking of the nature of world literature.” —Hans Ruprecht, Carleton University, Canada, author on Goethe, Borges, etc.
“And a fine major work it is.” —Arthur McMaster, Converse College, South Carolina, in Poets’ Quarterly
“Don’t be intimidated by an epic poem. It’s really coming back to that image of the storyteller sitting around the campfires of the world, dipping into and weaving the story of humanity, in the most beautiful, mellifluous language.” —New Consciousness Review Radio, Portland, Oregon
​”I am in awe of the brilliance of this book! Everyone must read this book, especially if you enjoy literature, wisdom, and philosophy.” —Anodea Judith, Author, Novato, California​

Nona Caspers
2018-08-11 15:00 - 17:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Nona Caspers discusses her new novel, The Fifth Woman.

Praise for The Fifth Woman

“The Fifth Woman is stealthily astonishing from its first line to its last. Over the course of twenty-three connected short fictions, the writer marks out a trail of mourning that is both quite straightforward and miraculously layered, strange, and emotionally multifaceted. There is not a single sentence in these stories that is not as clear as water…. It is a wonderful book.”—Stacey D’Erasmo

“Grief alters the world in ways that are both expected and less so. The Fifth Woman is a story of love, loss, and carrying on, in language that is always precise and often transporting. There is a sadness here but also acute observation and magical happenings. Nona Caspers is a true original.”—Jean L. Thompson

About The Fifth Woman

At the center of this book is the death of the narrator’s partner in a bicycling accident. Each short chapter serves as a brief vignette of, or occasionally a magical-realist metaphor for, the grieving process. A shadow of a dog appears in her apartment with no apparent source; a crack opens in the ceiling and splits her building down the middle. One day she notices in the alley below her window four women chatting together and a fifth, with no features, standing on the perimeter. She finds herself wondering: What did she want from me? What are the things that matter? At times dryly comical, at other times radiantly surreal, The Fifth Woman is a testament to the resurrecting power of memory and enduring love.

Big Ideas Reading Group
2018-08-11 16:00 - 17:00 | Kepler’s Books, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park , CA, 94025, United States
Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future by Johan Norberg
Our world seems to be collapsing. The daily news cycle reports the deterioration: divisive politics across the Western world, racism, poverty, war, inequality, hunger. While politicians, journalists and activists from all sides talk about the damage done, Johan Norberg offers an illuminating and heartening analysis of just how far we have come in tackling the greatest problems facing humanity. In the face of fear-mongering, darkness and division, the facts are unequivocal: the golden age is now.
Johan Norberg is a lecturer, documentary filmmaker and internationally acclaimed author. He is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington DC and the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels. A frequent commentator in Swedish and international media, he has a weekly column in Sweden’s biggest daily, Metro.

Poetry Event: GEARS TURNING w/ Kim Shuck
2018-08-12 16:00 - 18:00 | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Join us for an afternoon of wonderful poetry by SF Bay Area based poets, artists, and musicians with your host Kim Shuck.
To participate in the open mic sessions, please arrive by 4 and plan to listen to all of the featured poets. Seating/space is limited.
